Hugh Herr co-directs the Center for Extreme Bionics at the MIT Media Lab, where he is pioneering a new class of biohybrid smart prostheses and orthoses to improve the quality of life for thousands of people with physical challenges. A powered ankle-foot prosthesis called the Empower by Ottobock, for instance, emulates the action of a biological leg to create a natural gait, allowing persons with amputation to walk with normal levels of speed and metabolism as if their legs were biological.  

Herr also advances powerful body exoskeletons that augment human physicality beyond innate physiological levels, enabling humans to walk and run faster with less metabolic energy. He is the co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Dephy Inc., which creates products that augment physiological function through electromechanical enhancement.

To ballroom dancer Adrianne Haslet-Davis, dancing was everything. So when she lost her left foot in the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, she vowed — from her hospital bed — that she would dance again. Two hundred days later, standing on the TED2014 stage, she did just that. With the help of MIT prostheticist Hugh Herr, Haslet-Davis performed in Vancouver for the first time since the bombing.